UTOSC — Day 1

First things first, before I forget (something, sadly, that is more commonplace these days — what was I saying again?); It’s good to see that the Utah Open Source Conference, now in its third year, is growing into one of the more established events on the annual GNU/Linux (or Linux, take your pick) calendar.

The reason I say that is because after a conversation with Will Smith — the UTOSC guy, not the actor — I was surprised that the event has come quite far in only three years. UTOSC is clearly one that I am going to mark on my annual calendar.

Day 1 at UTOSC — and this is from the perspective of the Fedora booth, where I am parked — started out quietly and as the day progressed, became busier with more visitors, questions and comments about the distro.

At 12:30 or a bit later, I was marshalling the forces for a Fedora Activity Day in one of the classrooms at Salt Lake City Community College, the venue for UTOSC. I say “marshalling” because the best part of organizing a FAD is letting people who know more than you take off with it after you introduce it. Such is the case at this event, with the FAD around Fedora Event Splash, or FES. After introducing it, both Ian Weller and Clint Savage — both of whom had been working on it for several months — took the reins and we had a productive meeting that Fedora folks will hear more about going forward.

Later in the day, Clint walked in and said “Here, you’ll like this,” and handed me a box. I looked quickly inside and noticed what I thought was a . . . tent? Actually, it was the vertical banners for the Fedora booth, a new addition to the event box.

Day 2, which starts in a few hours, appears to be shaping up to be another great day at UTOSC. More to follow.

(Fedora ambassador Larry Cafiero runs Redwood Digital Research in Felton, California, and is an associate member of the Free Software Foundation.)